Monday, March 31, 2014

Presenter

Willie Padilla, Professor in the Department of Physics, Boston College

The advent of metamaterials has ushered in a new era of designer electromagnetic materials and has realized novel responses ranging from negative refractive index and superlensing to perfect absorption and cloaking. Electromagnetic properties achieved by metamaterials derive from the geometry of their unit cells, as opposed to the band-structure of their makeup, and are thus a bottom-up design paradigm for the construction of advanced materials which hold great potential for applications spanning the electromagnetic spectrum. Although metamaterial have realized novel electromagnetic properties, some which have been difficult to achieve with natural materials, the ability to dynamically control these responses in real-time would offer significant advantages enabling metamaterials to transition into state-of-the-art devices. I will show several examples of both solid-state electronically controlled and MEMS-based dynamic metamaterials operating in the infrared range and highlight several potential applications.
Willie Padilla received a PhD from the UC San Diego and was a Director¿s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 2006 he joined the Department of Physics at Boston College and is a Full Professor. In 2007 he was awarded a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research and Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2011.